GOP allows NSA, Syria debate

A long-delayed Pentagon appropriations bill is heading to the floor after the House Rules Committee voted Monday night to allow a structured debate including amendments related to NSA surveillance at home and the flow of military aid overseas in the Mideast.

Altogether, 100 amendments are promised consideration, but those affecting the NSA — funded in the bill — and military aid to anti-government forces in Syria are clearly the most sensitive politically for the Republican leadership.

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Indeed, conservatives led by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) had threatened to defeat the rule if votes were not permitted on a bipartisan proposal to narrow the ability of the NSA to collect private call records and metadata on telephone customers in the U.S.

“It’s not a partisan issue. It’s something that cuts across the entire political spectrum,” Amash told the Rules panel. And he argued that the amendment seeks only to rein in the NSA’s “blanket authority” under the PATRIOT Act to collect records and the metadata.

“In order for funds to be used by the NSA, the court order would have to have a statement limiting the collection of records to those records that pertain to a person under investigation,” Amash said. “If the court order doesn’t have that statement, the NSA doesn’t receive the funding to collect those records.”

Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.), the bill’s manager, argued that some limits were needed on the debate, given the classified nature of the NSA’s activities.

“If I have to respond to some of the amendments that I have seen in an open session, it’s not a fair fight,” Young said, arguing that he would be hampered by secrecy rules in trying to respond to critics. “The only argument that my wife and I have ever have is she wants to know what I know and I tell her, ‘I can’t tell you what I know.’”

Amash’s outspoken style and the NSA headlines captured the most attention. But the debate over U.S. military aid to Syrian rebels is itself very sensitive.

Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama for being slow to intercede and also complained that the U.S. is becoming needlessly entangled in another nation’s civil war.

The leadership seems wary now of the House coming out too strongly against aid, and the amendment allowed under the rule seems calibrated with that in mind.

The amendment would prohibit any funds to be used “with respect to military action in Syria to the extent such action would be inconsistent” with the War Powers Act. In comparison, Rules did not permit a more broadly written ban on any aid until Congress authorizes such assistance.